In 2009, when Sergio Marchionne’s team presented the first five-year plan for what would become Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), his VP for Quality Doug Betts told attendees that Chrysler’s quality problems would soon be a thing of the past. Thanks to Fiat’s superior fit-and-finish standards and “World Class Manufacturing” system, Chrysler hoped to match the best mass-market competitors on quality by 2012 according to Betts. Three years after that initial goal had passed unaccomplished, Betts is gone but FCA’s US-market brands are still occupying the bottom tier of Consumer Reports’ most recent automotive quality survey. With quality problems plaguing even its “halo” Hellcat and Ecodiesel engines as recently as last week, it’s clear that Marchionne hasn’t been able to bring the long-term quality backmarker up to pace.